fidgetware

Custom Apps for You

I tried to order my phone online as soon as I woke up and had issues like the many other tens of thousands of people. I tried the Apple website and then tried the AT&T website, which failed too. I soon realized the issue was with AT&T and after exacerbating the issue by having multiple browsers open I decided to call AT&T. After all, being the old company they were I figured that they probably had a mainframe that took the orders and that by bypassing the web the line would be shorter. I was talking to a rep in no time, but had to get transferred to the dreaded ordering process system that was a mess. I was told it was a 5 minute wait, but after 40 minutes I gave up and called my local AT&T store. Once again I was talking an employee quickly and they told me that the system was down, but that they were taking orders at the store manually. 10 minutes later I walked into a nearly empty store and placed my order and they ran my credit card using the old paper process. 10 minutes later and I was done. Later that morning I was called by the sales rep as he was placing my order and had forgotten the CVV code for my card. This was a good sign that my order was going it. Sure enough about 2 hours later I received an email confirm and I verified online that my order had been placed. Now for the waiting and the hoping that AT&T will ship on time. I am not sure if AT&T will ship the phone or simply send the order to Apple. But here is to waiting.

As of tomorrow there will be two new data plans from AT&T. I have to admit that at first I was disappointed to hear the end of the unlimited data plan. AT&T has been under fire for many years as there service can really be below par in some cities. They have often blamed heavy data users for hogging the bandwidth. Unfortunately the data hogs are not likely to switch from the all you can eat plan to a metered plan. So in the short term I do not for see better experience for most of us.

The new plans start at $15 for 200MB and then $25 for 2GB. After reviewing my data usage I realized that I typically use less that 200MB. So I could save myself $180 over a year. The other nice thing is that when you do go over you simply start a new 30 day cycle, so there are no big penalties that can happen when you go over on your voice minutes. It would be really nice if the family plans would allow you to share your data plan like you can share minutes.

As there is now a much cheaper data plan getting an iPhone is now more of an option for a much wider range of consumers. I wonder though if AT&T will make you buy a more expensive plan to get a new subsidized iPhone.